A guide to picking your character as Alchemists
Alchemists are stuck in a strange position, unlike the other teams, Alchemists shouldn’t blindly pick a character they enjoy if they want to win/be useful. Alchemists should pick their characters in reaction to the homunculi, a quick check at teams will tell you what characters the Homunculi picked. The reasons for this are simple, Alchemists can be completely screwed over if the enemy Homunculi team doesn’t have to deal with any direct counters. A good example would be a Lust/Pride/Tucker team composition, which can defend Doctor for an eternity if you forgot to pick a tank and some Ninja’s. I personally divide the Alchemists team into 4 categories; Tanks, Ninjas, Supports, and Damage. The Tanks are Alphonse and Alex Armstrong (and Greedling if you can get him). Alphonse is the best alchemist in the current meta and therefore a must-pick in any situation due to his ability to heal from all damage taken for a few seconds and hide other alchemists in his armor, this coupled with his good CC and good sustained damage vs stationary NPC’s makes him very effective. Armstrong, on the other hand, is good at controlling his opponent with his W and R, forcefully moving them into a corner or shoving them away from your team is incredibly useful coupled with his fast farming, a high-priority pick for sure. He’s also one of the only Alchemists who has Upgrades, giving him an excellent late game scaling potential. Greedling’s Ultimate shield just makes him an excellent damage sponge vs Father, you really won’t get him until lategame (if at all) and he’s only situationally accessible, so we won’t be covering him. The Ninjas are Fu and Lan fan, (Ling is more of a mixture between Ninja and support due to his lacking damage but higher CC and survivability.) Ninjas deal incredible burst damage and should be picked into Squishy Homunculi compositions to deal with them easily, they are also the only characters in the game with the ability to stealth. Fu is a high-priority pick due to his Suicide bomb, which makes him great at killing Doctor and Cray. The Supports are May Chang, Marcoh, Havoc, Hawkeye, Hohenheim, and technically Ling. (See Ninjas) You can further subdivide the supports into Offensive and Defensive supports, May and Marcoh are defensive due to their focus on healing and using hard crowd-control to help their team, May also packs damage negation and an ability to reposition her allies, whereas Marcoh packs in an ability to deal extra damage to Philosopher’s Stone charges. May Chang is a high-priority and extremely useful pick due to her AoE heal. Whereas Marcoh should situationally be picked into tankier Homunculi compositions in order to lower their Stone charges. Havoc, Hawkeye, and Ling are offensive due to their more damage oriented and debuffing play style. Havoc’s Q can completely shut down certain characters as long as his teammates don’t attack them while they sleep, while also packing a long range stun and better survivability than most supports. Hawkeye can Silence her enemies and lower their armor and damage for a period of time, while also packing the longest range in the game and ability to reveal sections of the map with her Flare, her long range Stun (while shorter than Havocs) deals high damage and can be used to clean up an escaping target or snipe a low-hp NPC. Ling is perhaps the oddest support, being more of a mixture between support and Ninja, but his ability to heal himself, make his entire team invisible, increase others speed, dash, and stun Makes him an ideal candidate for holding important items and doing sneaky Doctor and Cray rushes. Unfortunately, Hawkeye and Havoc are not very useful vs most Homunculi compositions and are usually low-priority picks, Ling is slightly better but still not entirely useful against most Homunculi compositions. You may notice I didn’t mention Hoenheim, there’s a good reason for that, he’s garbage, don’t pick him. The Damage group of alchemists are Roy, Edward, Olivier, Izumi, and Hughes . The Damage category is all about raw damage and CC. CC-chaining is extremely important to what defines the Damage role. Roy packs a heavy punch with his AoE damage and scaling potential, being one of the 3 alchemists with buyable upgrades. His strong post-upgrade autoattacks and fast farming make him a high-priority pick. Edward combo’s extremely well using his walls and R, he works incredibly well with Alphonse and has some of the fastest leveling in the game, his ability to gain an insane amount of armor using his Automail blade also gives him better survivability than one would expect, a decent pick with great combo potential. Olivier is an odd character, with the ability to hide in a tank and duel some Homunculi, and her various slows, coupled with her being one of the three Alchemist characters with buyable upgrades, makes her a very strong pick and never a detriment to a team. Izumi is a great combo character, with the ability to control her opponents with her Q and ignore damage with her W whilst stunning with her R allows her to be versatile in several situations, sadly, her overall abilities are lacking and her combo potential isn’t as great as Edwards, and doesn’t deal comparable damage to Roy. An ok pick, though with several flaws. Hughes may seem to be out of place in the damage category, but his stuns, survivability, decent damage, and his role as a solid counterpick against Cornello and Tucker using his R to dispel their dummy-units is extremely useful. His ability to make a good chunk of gold using his photo’s also gives him great utility as he can accelerate the Upgrades of the Armstrongs and Roy, as well as letting his team buy books earlier. A high-priority pick and extremely useful. Team Composition Now that we’ve covered the characters you’re able to pick, it’s important to remember that picking Characters that work well with the other members of your team is just as important as picking characters that counter your enemies. A solid Team composition usually involves a Tank, a Ninja, a Damage dealer, a Support, another Tank/Ninja/Damage dealer, and a free slot for whatever fits the composition you're with or you’re up against. The commonly accepted best team composition at the time of writing this is Alphonse, Fu, Lan Fan, Roy, May Chang, and Edward/Hughes (depending on what you’re up against.) Now this isn’t to say you should always pick this team comp, as it has serious flaws against certain Homunculi compositions, remember, Alchemists should always pick their team in reaction to the Homunculi’s team. For instance, against a tanky Homunculi comp like Sloth/Gluttony/Envy, Fu and Lan Fan almost become completely useless, and probably aren’t worth picking compared to the characters with the greater ability to CC-chain the Homunculi. On the flip side, a Homunculi composition that contains a greater amount of characters that use the Doctor (such as a composition that contains Tucker/Cornello) makes Ninja’s extremely valuable picks for their ability to do a lot of damage in a short amount of time, as well as kill Doctor/Cray. However, in the current meta, Fu and Alphonse are almost necessary to a winning Alchemist composition. So make sure your team at least has one of the two.